Creation of memorials is motivated by the need to preserve history and appreciate art. Vietnam veteran’s war memorial and the United States war memorial museum provide a rich source of historical information for a variety of purposes.Abstract
Creation of memorials is motivated by the need to preserve history and appreciate art. Vietnam veteran’s war memorial and the United States war memorial museum provide a rich source of historical information for a variety of purposes. Whereas Vietnam War memorial was in honor of the fallen soldiers who died during war, the holocaust memorial shows the grim reality of the horrors of genocides. Vietnam Veteran War Memorial wall in Washington DC was designed by Maya Lin in 1980. Maya was an architectural student and saw her design nominated to be review by a jury selected to choose a design for a national memorial in honor of Vietnam War victims. The main part of the memorial is located in the Constitution Garden northeast of the Lincoln Memorial. Its memorial wall is engraved with names honoring the servicemen. A stone throw away from the memorial wall is a bronze statue of the three soldiers. The establishment of the memorial dates to 1979 when Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Fund, Inc. started a memorial dedicated to soldiers who died in the US-Vietnam war.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was designed for the history of the holocaust. Dedicated in April 22, 1993, it is a reminder of the need to confront hatred and promote human dignity. The presidential commission on the holocaust was commissioned in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter to create and maintain a memorial of the victims of the holocaust (Boscia, Browne & Schreyer Honors College, 2015). The commission supported creation of the memorial museum in Washington DC. Its designer, James Ingo Freed was a Jew who fled the Nazi regime in Germany and came to America in 1939. Working with Finegold Alexander and Associates, Freed came up with designs that more or less allude to holocaust after his visitation of the holocaust sites in Europe to evoke fear and solemnity in its design. The museum is funded by the federal government. It is located in in close proximity to the national Mall, Washington DC.
The two memorials evoke object analysis for visitors as a means to describing their formal qualities and artistic values in terms of scale, image, placement and material (Duncan, 2005). The memorials are placed in public space to maintain history. The need to build monuments is based on the desire to remember epiphanies and tragedies affecting human lives.